BERLIN: Germany’s Greens on Saturday all but ruled out a three-way coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) after the September 24 election and a conservative said such an alliance would not be ideal.
Polls show Merkel’s conservatives are likely to win the election with around 38 per cent of the vote but will be left in need of a coalition partner. Their rival Social Democrats (SPD) are lagging on around 22 per cent.
Possible coalition options include a repeat of the current ‘grand coalition’ between the conservatives and SPD or a ‘Jamaica coalition’ of the conservatives, FDP and Greens — the name referring to the black, yellow and green colours of the Jamaican flag.
Katrin Goering-Eckhardt, one of the Greens’ two top candidates, told regional newspaper Passauer Neue Presse: “I can’t imagine Jamaica.”
Coalitions tend to be tested at the state level before they are formed at the national level. A Jamaica alliance was formed in the coastal state of Schleswig-Holstein after Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) won an election there in May.
But Goering-Eckhardt said the Greens and FDP had “diametrically opposed positions” on issues including climate protection, emission thresholds for clean cars and refugees.
“I can’t see how it could work at the national level,” she said.
FDP leader Christian Lindner told Focus magazine he was also unable to envisage a Jamaica coalition given the hurdles to reaching agreement with the Greens on immigration and energy.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a senior conservative, told regional newspaper Rheinische Post neither the conservatives nor the SPD wanted to continue the current ‘grand coalition’ because it “is not good for democracy”, referring to the small parliamentary opposition that such a tie-up leaves. — Reuters
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